CHAPTER 5 — Scent of a Secret

Elowen didn’t answer him.

She didn’t get the chance.

Someone knocked on the storage-room door—three sharp raps that were more code than courtesy. The voices in the hall shifted away. The whine of the indicator faded.

“Move,” Daire said, already calculating the angles.

He didn’t wait for her agreement. He cracked the door just enough to see Ira’s hunched silhouette and Kieran’s bored expression behind him.

“Coast is mostly clear,” Kieran said, no preamble. “Two trackers at the front still harassing drunks. Back alley’s open—for now.”

Daire slipped out, tugging Elowen after him. Her hand jerked in his, then settled. She could bolt later. If she was smart, she wouldn’t.

They ghosted down the service corridor, through a side door, and into the wet dark again.

Rain hit them like a curtain. Neon bled across the puddled street—red, blue, sickly green. Vesperridge kept its sins well lit.

Daire didn’t take her back toward the main strip. He cut the other way down a side street lined with shuttered shops and dead signs, steps sure on the slick concrete.

“Where are we going?” she asked, voice low, hugging her soaked shirt tighter around herself.

“Away from scanners,” he said. “And somewhere with a door I control.”

She snorted softly. “That’s not ominous at all.”

He ignored the jab.

The building he chose was three blocks over: an old apartment carved into a business block above a closed print shop, its windows dark, and a security camera hanging by a wire. He’d started using it as a safe place weeks ago, when Vesperridge stopped feeling like a place to pass through and more like somewhere you ran *in* from.

He got them up the back fire stairs, every sense on high alert, and into the flat without incident. The deadbolt slid home with a solid thunk.

Then he moved.

He checked the windows first, fingers quick on latches, eyes scanning the street. Curtains down. Sightlines blocked. Then, the inner rooms. Closet. Shower. Under the bed. Even the ridiculous kitchen cupboard is too small for anyone but a determined child.

Empty. For now.

He stepped back into the main room and only then registered that she hadn’t moved far from the door.

She stood dripping on the old floorboards, arms wrapped around herself, gaze flicking over the space like she was cataloging exits same as he had. Cracked ceiling. Couch that had seen better decades. A cheap table with two mismatched chairs. One bare bulb.

And the faint, bitter tang of suppressant pills in the air from the stash he kept on the counter, just in case.

“Sit,” he said.

“I’m not a dog,” she replied.

“Didn’t say you were.” He gestured to the couch. “You look like you’re going to fall over. Do it on something soft.”

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t.

He opened his mouth to argue, but her face went suddenly, vividly white.

Her hand flew to her stomach. Her other slapped out to brace on the wall. She sucked in a breath through her teeth, jaw clenched. Her damp shirt pulled just a fraction tighter across a subtle swell he hadn’t clocked before.

A floorboard under her heel gave a tiny, telling creak as her weight shifted.

Daire took a step forward before he could think about what he was doing.

“Sit,” he repeated, softer now. “That wasn’t a request.”

“I said—” The rest drowned under a wave of nausea; he saw it hit her in the way her throat worked, the twist of her mouth, the way her eyes squeezed shut for half a heartbeat.

She swayed.

He crossed the distance in two strides and caught her elbow. Her weight sagged into him for a second, then she yanked herself upright, spine rigid with pride. Her free hand stayed protectively near her midsection as if by instinct.

“Don’t,” she muttered. “Don’t touch me like—like you still have the right.”

“Then don’t fall over,” he shot back, still not letting go. “Breathe.”

She did, but it came out ragged. Close like this, the bitter suppressant couldn’t fully mask what her body was doing.

He inhaled once, carefully.

Suppressed omega. Old fear. Under it, that same honey-warm note had haunted him for months. And under *that*—

His wolf froze, then gave a low, instinctive growl under his breath he didn’t quite manage to swallow.

There it was again. That extra warmth threaded through her scent. Soft, fragile, new. A second, smaller rhythm nestled inside the familiar drum of her own. His own heartbeat stumbled in his chest in response.

“Fuck,” he whispered, vision tightening to her and the faint curve under her shirt.

He hadn’t said it for her benefit, but her eyes snapped open anyway.

“What?” she demanded. “What now?”

He ignored the part of his brain screaming that this was none of his business.

He also ignored the part that said it was *all* of his business, and had been since he’d told her to go.

“Are you carrying?” he asked, voice roughened down.

Her fingers tightened on her own forearm. “That is not your—”

“Answer the question.”

His eyes had gone dark enough that she seemed to reevaluate arguing for arguing’s sake. Her pulse leaped in her throat, visible.

She didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. But her gaze flickered—just once—to her middle and back.

That was enough.

He knew anyway.

Rule Two slammed into Elowen’s mind at the same time, cold and merciless.

*Bloodline overrides contracts.*

Pregnancy plus Lunaris rumor plus Tribunal attention was exactly how Crowe sliced through protections. A baby didn’t protect her. It put a target on her ribs.

Daire scrubbed a hand over his face, jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “Pregnancy plus bloodline rumor is how Crowe overrides everything,” he said quietly. “Marriage. Pack law. Oaths. If he can prove both, he doesn’t need your consent for anything.”

“Then don’t help him prove it,” she snapped. “Stop saying the word like you get to be here for it.”

Her anger was a relief—easier than the image that had just carved itself into his brain: Elowen on a Tribunal table, belly exposed, men with clipboards calling her “vessel” instead of name.

“Why are you in Vesperridge?” she demanded, yanking her arm free. “Why risk walking into Tribunal nets at all? You had Frostveil. Nightmoor. Me. You threw it away.”

His chest tightened.

“Calista threw it away,” he said. “I just didn’t see the match in her hand until everything was already on fire.”

“Poetic,” she said, brittle. “Not an answer.”

He leaned back against the edge of the table, crossing his arms to keep from reaching for her again. His knuckles ached; he flexed them.

“My company started bleeding out the week she came back,” he said flatly. “Contracts revoked. Accounts frozen. Tribunal ‘reviews’ opening on every file we’d ever touched.”

“Because you replaced your tragic missing Luna with your whore?” Elowen asked. The word came out like a self-inflicted wound. “That’s what they said in the feeds.”

“Because she came home with friends on the High Howl Tribunal,” he corrected. “Friends with agendas. Crowe’s been circling Nightmoor for years. Calista gave him a clean excuse to land.”

“And you being here?”

He let out a humorless laugh. “Vesperridge’s a good place to lose things. And people. I thought I could negotiate from a distance. Find proof. Buy time.”

“From a bar stool,” she said.

“From anyone who hates Crowe more than they hate me,” he said. “Turns out that’s a short list, but not empty.”

He looked at her. Really looked this time.

Hood shadow. Rented-shirt collar. Wet hair and damp lashes and the steel in her spine that refused to bend, even when her body was clearly exhausted.

The realization dropped into place with sick clarity.

Vhaloren Dominion Group collapsing, Frostveil sealed, Tribunal using words like *evaluation* and *asset recovery* like they were doing the world a favor.

And this woman, this omega, this **Lunaris vessel** the broadcast had just named, standing in front of him, shaking and furious and very likely carrying his child.

Guilt twisted deeper.

“I kept you off records,” he said, the words tasting like old ash, “because once they put your name in a file, you stop being a person.”

Her head snapped up.

“What?”

“In Frostveil,” he said. “No registry. No ledger entry. No paper trail you didn’t sign yourself. It wasn’t just about hiding you from Calista.” He swallowed. The rain on his skin suddenly felt like it had followed him inside. “The Tribunal can’t seize what they can’t ‘find’ on paper. That was the theory.”

Her laugh was rough and small and half-broken.

“Is that what you tell yourself when you sleep?” she asked. “That erasing me was kindness?”

“I didn’t erase you,” he said, too fast.

“You told me to go.”

His mouth shut.

Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, Doppler-fading as it passed.

He dragged his gaze back to hers. “I thought I was containing damage,” he said. “Keeping you off Crowe’s radar while I handled Calista and the Tribunal. I thought—”

“You thought not saying my name out loud would make me safe,” she said. “It just made it easier to throw me away without any witnesses.”

He flinched. She saw it. Good.

Her knees wobbled then, just a fraction. The room swam in her vision for a second. She set her jaw and reached for the back of the chair instead of him.

He stepped forward, unable not to.

“If you’re pregnant,” he said, voice dropping, “you’re not leaving my sight.”

Elowen’s fingers tightened on the chair until her knuckles blanched.

“Excuse me?” she breathed.

“Not while Crowe’s buying wombs by the file.” His eyes were dark, not with greed but something just as dangerous. “You may hate me. You may walk tomorrow. But tonight, you stay where I can stand between you and any man with a clipboard who thinks ‘vessel’ is a name.”

Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. Fear. Fury. Something traitorous under both.

“I don’t belong to you,” she said.

“No,” he agreed quietly. “You don’t.”

A small silence hung between them, thick with all the things they hadn’t said on that balcony and in the months since.

“But they’re not getting you,” he added at last. “Or the pup. Not while I’m breathing.”

She didn’t know whether that was a promise, a threat, or both.

Under her sleeve, the bracelet throbbed once, hot as a brand—caught between the pull of the man in front of her and the quiet, steady pulse of the life inside her. For a heartbeat, the crack along its surface glowed faintly, a thin line of silver fire that seemed to sync with her heartbeat before it faded.

It had never reacted this violently to fear alone. Or to any man’s presence before his.

She said nothing.

For now.